The Crew
Above the line, below the line, what I take in, what stays the same.
Eliyannah Amirah Yisrael is writing and directing The Caterpillar and The Butterfly, her first feature. It is a Black Midwestern film about two women, strangers, who ride the same bus on the south side of Chicago, made in the cinematic tradition she calls Hood New Wave. The film is in active development with a targeted shooting date of spring 2027.
She is a Chicagoan, raised on the south side. Her sensibility was built on two essential ingredients: observation and literature. Before directing independently, she spent ten years in scripted production in Hollywood, working for studios including Sony, FOX, NBC, HBO, Lionsgate, ABC/Disney, Paramount, and Warner Brothers, assisting Sanaa Hamri on Empire and Julie Taymor on The Glorias, work that shaped how she thinks about directing. Her webseries Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis was covered by PBS, Emmy magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and Elle UK. She lives and works between Chicago and Los Angeles.
What shapes the eye.
What stays the same in every project that comes from me.
The studio years.
Over ten years in scripted production in Hollywood — Sony. FOX. NBC. HBO. Lionsgate. ABC / Disney. Paramount. Warner Brothers. Never worked above the line at the studio level but worked adjacent to it, working as crew, primarily in production and logistics.
The résumé version is in the press kit, the useful version is the one I already carry: a working knowledge of how a studio show functions, what a real budget conversation sounds like, and how decisions are made that shape the work before the director ever sees the set. Understanding production has made me a stronger director.